Trade News

Rivian said Friday it expects to begin delivering a battery-electric pickup and battery-electric SUV to customers starting next summer.

The R1T pickup will arrive first, in June; the R1S utility vehicle is scheduled to roll off the line in August 2021.

The timing puts the company about six months behind original launch plans. But Rivian, like all other automakers, has been affected by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Rivian, backed by Ford Motor Co., Cox Automotive, Amazon and others, began assembling vehicles on a pilot production line this week.

Building high-quality vehicles will be a challenge on multiple fronts for the upstart. The company is manufacturing in a retooled Mitsubishi plant in Normal, Ill., with new equipment and a work force that has never assembled EVs before.

Pricing has not been released.

Rivian said it will soon release information on vehicle features, the company's charging network and when customers can configur…

NEW YORK -- Ford Motor Co. has obtained commitments from enough banks to extend the maturity of at least 90 percent of $5.35 billion of revolving loans for one year, a person close to the financing said.

The automaker has been in discussions with its lenders this month about a one-year extension of its $3.35 billion, three-year main corporate revolving credit facility and its $2 billion, three-year supplemental revolving credit facility.

JP Morgan leads the deal, according to thee people close to the transaction.

Ford is seeking to address loan maturities for the first time since downgrades in March removed its last investment-grade rating. The move is expected to test banks’ willingness to lend to a household name in an industry that has been hit hard by the coronavirus pandemic.

More lenders could agree to extend before the transaction closes on July 27. The company is looking to complete the extension ahead of its earnings call on July 30, a se…

Volkswagen Group's CEO again praised Tesla Inc.’s Elon Musk, this time for showing it’s possible to profit off electric cars even in the midst of a global pandemic.

Tesla and VW group’s Porsche sports-car division will be among the few automakers who navigate the market turmoil caused by COVID-19 without suffering a quarterly loss, CEO Herbert Diess said on LinkedIn.

“Elon Musk delivers results that many have deemed impossible,” Diess wrote in response to a post by auto industry researcher Ferdinand Dudenhoeffer. Diess said Tesla’s results support his view that “in five to ten years the world’s most valuable company will be a mobility company -- that can be called Tesla, Apple or Volkswagen.”

Volkswagen lays claim to the auto industry’s biggest push into electric cars with a five-year investment plan worth more than 30 billion euros ($35 billion). But the rollout of its first purely battery-powered vehicle has gotten off to a bumpy start. The launch of t…

Auto supplier Gentex Corp. said Friday it swung to a second-quarter net loss as sales plunged due to extended industrywide plant shutdowns related to the coronavirus pandemic.

The maker of high-tech rearview mirrors and cameras reported a net loss of $2.4 million compared with net income of $109 million a year earlier. Net sales fell 51 percent to $229.9 million.

Adjusted for severance-related costs net of tax, net income was $4.6 million, the company said. Gentex recorded positive cash flow from operations of $39.2 million despite the loss of production.

Gentex is one of several auto suppliers expected to release second-quarter earnings in the coming weeks.

"While the China market expanded by 9 percent in the second quarter, our historical revenue from China has been less than 10 percent of sales, so this provided very little help to offset the losses in our primary markets," CEO Steve Downing said in a statement. "The Company's primary markets i…

Local Motors will provide its autonomous Olli 2.0 shuttles to mobility operator Beep in an effort to increase the number of autonomous shuttles on roads, the companies said Thursday. The Olli 2.0 electric shuttles will join autonomous shuttle manufacturer Navya's electric shuttles in Beep's operational fleet.

"The collaborative agreement is intended to significantly expand the number of AV shuttles on public and private roads, enabling Beep and Local Motors to bring autonomous solutions to more people and enhance the rider experience through continued testing and safe deployments," the companies said in a statement.

Beep occupies an unusual space in the automated mobility world — it operates shuttle networks but makes neither self-driving technology nor the vehicles themselves. This marks the first time the company has expanded beyond a single shuttle provider.

Beep CEO Joe Moye said in an emailed statement to Automotive News that t…

Electric-vehicle makers in the cutthroat Chinese market face a potentially lethal mix of plummeting demand and a Tesla Inc. offensive, prompting more startups to see initial public offerings as a way to ensure survival.

Hozon New Energy Automobile Co. became the latest contender to launch its IPO path, saying Friday it wants one in Shanghai as soon as next year. WM Motor Technology Co. is weighing an initial stock sale in the same city as soon as this year, people familiar with the matter said. Li Auto filed for an IPO on the Nasdaq this month.

The manufacturers are vying for a foothold in China’s once heavily subsidized electric-car industry, with several being squeezed out by a lack of funding this year alone. But at the same time, the seemingly unstoppable market leader Tesla and one of its more established Chinese challengers, Nio Inc., have gained buyers in a potential sign of long-term strength for the industry.

“The strength in Tesla and Nio share…

Genesis, citing the coronavirus outbreak, is delaying the U.S. launches of its first crossover, the 2021 GV80, and its redesigned 2021 G80 sedan until this fall.

Both vehicles are built in Ulsan, South Korea, and were scheduled to go on sale this summer.

The reason for the delay was the shutdown of much of Michigan during the COVID-19 outbreak in the spring, including the EPA's offices and laboratories in Ann Arbor that certify vehicle emissions, a Genesis spokesman said Friday.

Genesis' U.S. sales dipped 25 percent in the first half, with G80 deliveries off 40 percent to 2,001. The brand is counting on the two vehicles to jump-start volume.

The midsize GV80 is priced from $49,925, including shipping — while packed with standard safety equipment and luxury features — in a deliberate move to draw consumers from rival brands.

The latest G80 is engineered on a new platform and features new powertrains and safety…

Join Automotive News Publisher Jason Stein for a daily podcast series about the coronavirus crisis. He’ll speak with industry experts, insiders and Automotive News reporters about how the virus is impacting and reshaping the automotive industry.

Gateway Bronco CEO Seth Burgett on how the Illinois restoration company is rebuilding vintage Ford Bronco SUVs and customer buzz surrounding the 2021 Bronco.

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STOCKHOLM -- Auto technology supplier Veoneer posted a smaller-than-expected quarterly operating loss on Friday and stood by its forecast for reduced full-year losses despite the coronavirus crisis.

The maker of radar and vision systems reported a $64 million operating loss, improving from a $137 million loss a year ago and well above the $134 million loss forecast in a poll of analysts published on the company's website.

Net sales plunged 62 percent to $184 million. The company said the organic sales decline was 53 percent.

Veoneer has moved to cut staff and furloughed still more while also trimming spending on R&D, which is expected to drop by more than $100 million from last year.

The auto industry, which was already grappling with slowing demand and mounting costs for the shift to electric vehicles and advanced automation before the pandemic hit, was particularly hard hit early in the quarter as production was halted in many markets by wid…

BMW plans a version of the X5 crossover that runs on hydrogen fuel cells, part of the carmaker’s plan of producing as many drive variants as possible until one technology proves dominant.

The i Hydrogen NEXT will get a limited production run starting in 2022, the German manufacturer said in a statement Friday. Toyota Motor Corp. will supply the fuel cells for the vehicle.

The technology “could have the potential to become another pillar in the portfolio of BMW,” CEO Oliver Zipse said.

Hydrogen fuel cells were long seen as a viable alternative because the technology provides fast refueling and long ranges -- solving many of the problems electric cars still face. But automakers have in past years discontinued hydrogen models because of the high cost of the technology and, more recently, rising pressure to conserve cash to deal with the coronavirus pandemic.

Daimler stopped development of a hydrogen version of its GLC in April, and said it would focu…

Volvo Cars will not reach its goal of selling 800,000 vehicles globally in 2020 because of the coronavirus pandemic.

"There will probably be a year delay," CEO Hakan Samuelsson said. "Before the pandemic we were on track to reach that or come very close to that."

Volvo would also fail to set a global sales record in 2020 because it won't be able to top the 705,452 vehicles is sold in 2019, its seventh consecutive year of record volumes.

"In the first half we lost 21 percent, which is almost 71,000 cars," Samuelsson told Automotive News Europe. "Therefore, even if we reach what we are forecasting for the second half, which is a return to the sales volume we saw last year, the year as a whole will be less than in 2019."

He referred to 2020 as the "corona year" and he's already looking forward to next year.

"In 2021 our absolute ambition is to resume growing," he said. "But it will be a new normal with a lot more electric cars, more online sales,…